یک روش تجزیه جدید به رشدحسابداری : استخراج فرمول و کاربرد آن در پیش از جنگ ژاپن

How can an economy grow in the early stages of economic development in the absence of total factor productivity growth, as has been allegedly the case in fast-growing East Asian economies? This paper advances the hypothesis that capital deepening associated with transformation of industrial structure can sustain growth for a long period without causing a decline in the rate of returns to capital. To examine our hypothesis, we develop a new decomposition formula for growth accounting that highlights such capital deepening. The formula is applied to data from prewar Japan, to assess the significance of industrial transformation in economic growth.

Kim and Lau (1994) and Young (1995) contend that it was accumulation of physical capital, and not total factor productivity (TFP) growth, that contributed to fast and long-lasting economic growth in the newly industrializing countries of East Asia. Krugman (1994) argues that the growth momentum of this region will be gradually lost as the rate of returns to capital continues to decline. Abramovitz (1993) and Hayami and Ogasawara (1999) present, however, historical data of the United States and Japan to show that contribution of TFP growth was small in early stages of economic development before research and educational capacity of the economy was improved in later stages.1

While the development economics has traditionally been concerned with the structural transformation of industries as a critical process of economic development, its efficiency implication has never been assessed empirically. The proper assessment of the effects of resource reallocation among industries on overall capital deepening and production efficiency has gained renewed importance in view of the fact that East Asian NIEs have achieved rapid economic growth without substantial improvement of production efficiency. If there had been no major structural transformation of industries in these economies, rapid capital accumulation would have resulted in declining returns to capital. This study attempted to incorporate the effects of the structural transformation of industries into the growth accounting framework by developing the new decomposition formula. This new formula takes into account not only the effects of intra-industry capital accumulation and TFP growth but also the effects of structural transformation on capital deepening and TFP growth of the entire economy.